Network traffic is transmitted over a network, such as the Internet, from a sending system (e.g., computer system) to a receiving system (e.g., computer system) via a physical network interface card (NIC). A NIC is a hardware device found in a typical computer system that allows for the sending and receiving of network traffic. Typically, network traffic is transmitted in the form of data packets, where each data packet includes a header and a payload. The payload contains information regarding the source address, destination address, size, transport protocol used to transmit the data packet, and various other information associated with the data packet. The payload contains the actual data to be transmitted to the receiving system.
Virtualization technology allows multiple execution environments to concurrently execute on a single physical system. In such cases, the data transferred between the various execution environments may be performed using a virtualized network infrastructure.